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Trademark Law And Status Signaling: Tattoos For The Privileged, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

The motivations for buying a good or service are highly complex. At the most basic level, people buy goods because of what the goods do or because of the aesthetic elements they embody. More technically, buyers derive utility from the "functional" quality of these goods. Another motivation relates to what the goods "say" about the buyer. Here, the good is a signaling device. Signaling is not new, of course, and can indicate anything from social class to political leanings.

This Essay addresses the issue of whether it should be public policy to subsidize this type of person-to-person status signaling. This …